In 1961, during a stay of Paris, the Soviet Union's greatest ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev (Ivenko) defected to the West. The communist regime was furious at his betrayal though, if this portrait of him is in any way accurate, you might suspect that secretly they probably felt they were well rid of him.

The film forces viewers to make a choice as to how they see the central figure: was Nureyev really a one dimensional, self-centred jerk; has the screenplay reduced him to that; or is Ivenko such a limited performer that this is all he can make of the role? Ivenko has quite the sharpest pair of cheekbones since the 60s glory days of Malcolm McDowell and he seems to be adept at the on-stage prancing, but there is no variation in his performance. He is all strop and defiance.

It's one thing to be a diva in Hollywood, quite another to do so in Soviet Russia. I guess we are meant to see his relentless ego driven perfectionism, his tantrums and defiance of authority as heroic, an expression of individuality against crushing conformity. Maybe, but I suspect this Nureyev would have been just as full of himself, and as belittling of others, whatever his background.

The film has three time frames: the tour of Paris in 1961, his struggles to become great ballet star in Russia under the tutelage of Fiennes, and some brief flashbacks to his childhood, starting with his birth in the middle of a train journey. The period detail is nicely done and those flashbacks to childhood are quite striking, shot in a wider ratio to the rest of the film in what initially looks like black and white. They have a tinge of Tarkovsky's Mirror to them. Fiennes' third film as a director is nicely turned out and the limited budget has been well stretched, but it is crushingly dull. The only surprise comes in the closing titles with a credit for David Hare as scriptwriter and one for Liam Neeson as executive producer.